2/26/2009 @ 12:01AM

Men, Science And Evolutionary Theory

“It doesn’t take a degree in biology to notice that men and women are utterly different.”

Imagine Larry Summers making that statement when he was president of Harvard, instead of the much milder query he raised about the capacity of women in science that was surely one factor in his ousting as president. Yet here is a Yale professor, published by Harvard University Press in the new paperback edition of Men: Evolutionary and Life History, going much further than Summers in the opening sentence of his book.

The difference is that Richard Bribiescas speaks as a scientist, not as a university president. He is a biological anthropologist who has the equivalent of a degree in biology and more. Even though he uses the mantle of science to encourage non-biologists like Larry Summers and this reviewer to accept and act on what he asserts, he has, from science, an authority the rest of us lack.

A biological anthropologist is quite different, utterly different, from a cultural anthropologist, who, believing that culture, not biology, makes us different, would never make this statement. Bribiescas hardly alludes to the cultural argument, but no reader can be unaware that the way he begins is spitting into the prevailing wind of feminism and gender-neutrality in Western societies. The charm of his book is that he utterly ignores the opinion, or prejudice, against it and proceeds as if all he has to do is explain, and you will agree.

The science in question here is the current version of Darwin’s evolutionary theory. That theory says that human beings (for the book title speaks of men, not males) are dominated in their lives by the need to get their genes into the next generation. If you can do this, you have “survived,” even if or despite the fact that you die.

The difference between survival as staying alive and as reproducing–not one’s self but one’s genes–is a theme of Bribeiscas’s book. It leads him to introduce the recent theory of “life history” into evolutionary theory so as to elaborate on the trade-offs, throughout human life, between expending energy to stay alive vs. devoting it to reproduction. Those trade-offs have a kind of rationality enabling the twin goals to be satisfied even though they are at odds. This addition, one might say, is an adaptive mutation intended to maintain Darwinian theory against one of the many threats to its survival arising from its environment of inconvenient facts.

Now, since the dominant function of life is to reproduce, one must, in the case of human life focus on the difference between men and women. The difference most impressive to Bribiescas is the one that is old as the hills and was known prior to all evolutionary science, namely that women know for sure that their child is theirs and men do not.

A long time ago, the philosopher Xenophon in his book Cyropaideia made this distinction plain when describing Cyrus’ parents: His father is “said to have been” Cambyses, and his mother is “agreed to have been” Mandane. Fatherhood is an allegation by law, and motherhood is a statement of truth. Among the many points of interest in Bribiescas’ comprehensive book, let’s consider this one.

What ought a man to do, given this discrepancy between men and women? Like many scientists, Bribiescas lives under the yoke of a crude positivism which denies that scientific fact has any ethical implications. “Darwinian evolutionary theory does not support any moral stance.” But of course it does. The trouble is not that Darwinian theory has no implications, but that it contradicts itself with two opposing implications.

If it is true that the overriding concern of a human male is to ensure that his wife’s children are his, then he should watch his wife carefully. He should hire eunuchs to guard her and behave like a sultan with his harem, giving full vent to his jealousy of her and his hostility to all other males who might be rivals as well as to all females who might be bribed by his rivals.

No consideration of loving trust should be allowed to interfere with this regimen, lest our rational human male be deprived of the certitude he requires. Of course, he may not be so rigidly rational, but evolutionary science would remove any reasonable basis for hesitation and would counsel him to be as jealous as he possibly could.

Yet as a scientist, a human male would have quite an opposite duty. A man of science does not take the view of his own sex but rises above it to consider the views of both sexes. He would be devoted to science, not to his own private genes. He would not favor his own child at any cost but would support other children if they showed better promise of becoming future scientists–future Darwinians.

He would therefore not regard the sexes as “utterly different,” because it might be possible for each of them to reach the highest and most important status of a human being, that of a scientist. Whether the sexes are equal in this regard is another question, but one would not want to close one’s mind to the possibility that someone other than oneself might be superior, and that some other form of government besides the tyranny of a sultan might be just.

Evolutionary theory is at odds with itself: It cannot accept that man is a special being, raised above all others in evolutionary history, and it cannot deny that only man is capable of science, which allows him to transcend his animal selfishness. In closing, I note that I have made no reference to religion but only brought out the inner contradiction of Darwinism.

Harvey Mansfield is a professor of government at Harvard and a distinguished research fellow at the Hoover Institution.